Rifle

Rifles are a class of shoulder-fired/mid-sized weapons. These weapons are much larger than the standard sidearms, but smaller than infantry support weapon systems. In the actual sense of the word, a "rifle" is a weapon with a spiral grooved barrel that imparts a spin on a projectile to obtain better levels of accuracy than a smoothbore weapon, such as a musket or a shotgun. However, "rifle" is sometimes also used as a technically erroneous term for certain directed energy weapons.

When regarding human weapons, there are a few forms of the word "rifle" used. An "assault rifle" is a select-fire weapon that fires an intermediate rifle round. A "battle rifle" fires a large full-size rifle round and is usually, but not always, semi-automatic and often has a long full-size barrel. A "sniper rifle" can fire various high-caliber ammunition variants, and are almost exclusively semi-automatic. Their goal is to achieve high levels of accuracy and lethality, and have longer ranges than assault or battle rifles.

Regarding Covenant and Forerunner weapons, the term "rifle" is used not to describe the technical nature of the weapon itself, but in the role it plays on the battlefield. For example, the plasma pistol and plasma rifle, while similar, are used for two different purposes. A rifle is larger than a pistol, often requiring both hands to use, but is smaller than a heavy weapon, such as the Brute Shot or fuel rod cannon. This applies to both the plasma rifle and the beam rifle. The Covenant carbine is also considered a rifle and the spiker can fit into this list as well.

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